“The Answer is Blowing in the Wind.”
You’re bound to have driven past an airfield, or close by to a helicopter landing pad, and seen the distinctive shape of a wind sock… But were you aware of what information this deceptively simple cloth tube conveys to pilots?
Not only does it show the direction of the wind, it’s also a quick and useful measure of the wind’s strength; a pretty crucial factor in the landing stage of flying an aircraft.
When you’re learning to fly a light aircraft, the chances are you will go ‘solo’ in less hours than it took you to learn to drive a car (I think I went solo in a school Cessna 152, based at Cranfield, in 10 hours, which is about average); and your instructor is glad to get that symbolic ‘first’ – a quick circuit of the airfield on your own – out of the way early-on, so that they can get back into the plane, and get on with teaching you the myriad other things that will make you a competent and safe pilot.
But one other solo task to deal with is ‘cross wind landings’, which simulates the wind not being on ‘the nose’ and perfectly in line with the main runway, which is ideal; but instead, the wind coming at you from the side, which is not ideal. (Most airfields have a secondary, ‘cross wind runway’ at 90 degrees to the main runway, for this very reason.)
In a nutshell, flying in a cross wind means that one wing has more lift than the other. Which means the plane becomes unstable and needs careful balancing by the pilot; and we’ve all been on an airliner when that sinking, wallowing movement starts happening as we get ever closer to landing.
Every aircraft has a published cross wind limit. (My 152 was 12 knots; in comparison, for a WW2 Spitfire and Hurricane it’s 15 knots. But relax; in a modern A380, its limit is a whopping 35 knots.)
Well guess who pressed on as the cross wind limit approached, instead of calling the tower for permission to switch back to the main runway circuit, and gave myself a scare I never forgot? Yes, me.
Luckily, it made me a more cautious pilot.
There are two significant sayings when you’re a student pilot: “There are old pilots and there are bold pilots. But there are no old, bold pilots” and “Every landing you walk away from is a good one.”
Pilots of all sizes of aircraft have numerous instruments on their cockpit panels to assist them when landing. But every single airfield, from Dubai International to a rural grass strip, will still prominently display windsocks as a backup indicator for pilots.
At this point I’m not going to make some cheesy reference to how this analogy should be applied to your business, and not to get carried away on numerous and fancy KPIs, when a simple glance at the bank balance is your quickest guide to whether you’re within your safe limits. (I know you get my ‘drift’.)
But at least you know about windsocks, now.
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